Pepa wanted to say something, but her voice was so tremulous that she could not: “Nothing will be left me,” she thought to herself, “nothing but the old dreary miserable thought: she will pray and pray—and live; I, hoping and still hoping, shall die.”
Leon who seemed to read her thoughts in her contracted brow, said, looking into her face:
“It is in critical moments that the generosity or selfishness of a soul is revealed.”
Pepa was trembling in every limb; she propped her head on one hand, and looking down at her knees, on which Ramona’s tiny fingers were playing a tune, she said:
“I do not know whether mine is generous or selfish. I only know that I shed many tears just now in praying that God would let no one die for my happiness. How bitter our prayers can sometimes be! How cruelly our thoughts can torture us in the effort to prevent the flowers we must pluck and cast out turning into snakes! I have prayed more to-day than in any one day of my life before; but I cannot be sure of having prayed rightly and from a pure heart. The battle raged within me; I believe that the words I used had a different meaning every minute—that the name of God meant the Devil—that love meant hate, and life stood for death. The feeling and the thought were struggling for the mastery and each tried to find expression in words.—I did not really pray, I was not really good; and yet, indeed, indeed, I meant to be. I am so much a woman, so little of a saint.—But I shall not feel so wicked when I have found courage enough to pray clearly and boldly that we may both die—then everything will come right....”
She rose.
“In short,” she said, “I am going. You know that my only joy in life is to obey you.”
“Thanks—thanks...” murmured Leon, taking up Monina.